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My creative therapy
Posted Wednesday 25 January 2012
Agata, who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, tells her story and describes the comfort art has brought to her life.
I moved from Portugal to London as a child, 23 years ago. Moving to a strange country with a different language was very traumatising. I longed to go back ‘home’.
I came from a dysfunctional family. I saw and experienced a lot of things that a child shouldn’t. I hated school. I was bullied for being foreign and so I retaliated by not co-operating.
I was sent to see many child psychiatrists, but I never spoke. I was scared to tell these strangers my secrets. I moved to various different schools before settling down at secondary school. By then school had become a retreat from what was happening at home – my Mother too suffered from a mental health condition and I had to look after her as well as myself.
So I immersed myself in creative studies, from art to dance. I loved it. It gave me a purpose in life. This was not the first time that I had experimented with art. As a child I would ‘disassociate’ in a corner and draw and paint. I never got bored. I learned to play alone.
I always knew I wanted to be creative. I lived in a dream world. I would fantasise about being successful at something and for me that was art. I lived in my head and I wanted to bring out what was inside me.
I started to take these ambitions seriously when I was accepted onto an art foundation course and then onto a BA Fine art course. The first year of university was terrible and I failed it. I was always having mood swings. But when I was focused I could spend days and nights working on projects without my aggressive symptoms coming out. Creativity soothed my symptoms.
But life was not getting better. It was getting slowly worse. In my second year of university I began experiencing anxiety and panic attacks in social situations. Ever since, I have avoided social interaction in unfamiliar and crowded places.
I did really well at university. I was so proud of myself. Then the realisation dawned on me: because of my social anxiety I had little contacts in the industry who could help me get a job.
I worked for two years as a care/support worker for the elderly and disabled. In the meantime, I kept on with my art.
I had a couple of shows around that time. I was working long hours for little money. I had little time for myself and I just crashed. I lost my home and my job. I had to go to the council and register as homeless.
Around this time, in early 2010, I had a breakdown. Although I was always seeing psychiatrists as a child and teenager, I was so ashamed of disclosing all my symptoms that I had skimmed past the self-hate, self-harm, disassociation from reality, suicidal thoughts, and so on.
Previously I had been diagnosed as having depression. Over the years I had been prescribed all sorts of antidepressants. Sometimes these didn’t work. At times they actually made my symptoms worse.
This time I knew I needed to tell the truth. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). When I was diagnosed, I felt a sense of relief. Now I could understand my symptoms. It felt like a weight had been lifted.
I was offered treatment on the dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) programme at the Oscar Hill Service in London. Although therapy helps, there is no cure for BPD (as I was told in writing by my psychiatrist) and this is something I will have to try and manage for the rest of my life.
I am still uncomfortable telling people about my therapy and condition because it is portrayed so negatively in the media. I am scared of how people will react. Of course the closest people in my life know what I am struggling with and are understanding and supportive.
Expressing myself through art is the thing I know I can do best. Being an artist however is never easy and I have had a lot of knockbacks because of the type of art that I produce. My themes are very personal to me. They are usually about my emotional and physical health/pain or about gender politics – things that I feel very strongly about. My work is at times not easy to digest. I feel I deal with a wider truth that a lot of people are afraid to confront.
I am still working as an artist and my specialism is fine art photography and sculpture. I am happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to start an MA in Fine art this autumn.
When I feel awful, I think about how lucky I am to have a gift to help me through my life and guide me to a much more positive place. I see my working time as therapy outside of four white NHS walls.
Making art has given me more self-validation than ever before. I am no longer ashamed of what I make, or feel I have to explain why I work within the area that I specialize in. I have now accepted myself as an artist, even though I have a lot of problems that I need to work at.
Without art, I would not be here today. I feel that art has saved my life many times.
Agata Cardoso
Have a look at Agata's art on her website. (Please be aware that some of these images may be triggering to some people.)
Find out more about arts as therapy.
6 Comments
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Great post Agata, I also have BPD and have written for Mind a few times in addition to my own blog. I think it is important for us all to share our experiences - the louder our voices get the more we are doing to tackle the stigma! Wanted to look at your art work but the link above doesn't work!? oops! Best Wishes
Sharon
http://showard76.wordpress.com -
Lovely brave Agata, I wish you good fortune with your MA. Your collages look really interesting and I think you could consider doing a graphic novel some day too and the play between text and image is similar. It reminds me a little of Dave McKean in approach if not the look and subject matter.
Despite terrible trials you've never given up fighting and I hope you are able to find increasing peace.
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Thanks for flagging up that broken link Sharon, should be fixed now.
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YOU are fabulous, but your psychiatrist is crap for telling you that you have an 'incurable' condition - that's an appalling statement and just not true - but it proves psychiatry hasn't changed their thinking at all on the subject of PD. No mental health service user should be told they have an incurable condition because that cannot be backed up with hard evidence.
People with other diagnoses don't get given terminal sentences like that anywhere near as easily.
Best of luck to you. -
Wonderful post Agata, and brilliant work on your website very inspiring indeed you are clearly a very talented artist I wish you all the best on your MA Fine Art and would love to see your work in exhibition. I am especially drawn towards your work about the meat / abbatoir / female body something I've recently been exploring too in my art practice. If you're still exploring that area I can recommend some interesting books to read! Keep up the great work! Hester
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Hi Agata, thanks you sharing your story. I too have been diagnosed with BPD and i have found art and writing to be of great help for me to cope. I did Art Foundation and started a degree, but then had to drop out because my health was so poor and i became homeless for a little while. It's nice to read stories like yours to know that i'm not alone and that there is hope for the future. xxx
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